Toyota At Le Mans, Past And Present

EPSOM, UNITED KINGDOM – June 21, 2013: Toyota returns to Le Mans
this weekend in pursuit of the biggest prize in international sports car
racing. For a second year, the Toyota Racing TS030 Hybrid will be aiming
for victory, having secured race wins in three other FIA World Endurance
Championship events in 2012.

It is the third in a series of superbly engineered Toyota Le Mans cars,
a sequence that began with TS010 in the early 1990s. This was developed to
take advantage of new technical regulations that allowed the most powerful
“Group C” race cars to run with a non-turbo 3.5-litre V10
engine – the same as those used at the time in Formula 1.

The TS010 tackled its first full season campaign in 1992 and made an
immediate impact, with Hitoshi Ogawa and Geoff Lees winning the opening
race at Monza. At Le Mans, however, the team had to settle for a
hard-fought second place, and was again denied when it returned there for a
one-off appearance in 1993.

Toyota subsequently provided racing engines for Le Mans teams through
the rest of the decade, before returning in 1998 with a full-blooded entry
with Toyota Team Europe – predecessor of today’s Toyota
Motorsport –with the TS020, better known as the Toyota GT-One.

Both beautiful and fast, the GT-One was designed by Andre de Cortanze
and was one of the most advanced racers of its day. It was created entirely
using CAD techniques and featured a carbon fibre monocoque, which helped
keep its weight down to a svelte 900kg. It was powered by a completely
re-engineered version of Toyota’s twin-turbo V8, producing around
600bhp.

In its Le Mans debut in 1998 it claimed second place on the grid and
held a strong second in the race until being forced into retirement in the
last hour of the race. The following year it seemed unstoppable, locking
out the first three places on the grid, only for separate accidents to
sideline the number one and two cars. The third Toyota had the consolation
of setting a new lap record en route to another second place result.

Toyota returned to the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2012 with the
TS030 Hybrid, a car which showcases how advanced hybrid power technology
can successfully be applied to the highest levels of international
motorsport. One of the key benefits of its Toyota Hybrid System-Racing
powertrain is a regenerative braking system that allows 300bhp of
additional boost to be generated from energy recovered under braking and
deceleration.

Although the team claimed three race wins in its debut championship
season, success again eluded it at Le Mans. This year the team is fielding
two 2013-specification cars, piloted by the three-man squads of Alex
Wurz/Nicolas Lapierre/Kazuki Nakajima and Anthony Davidson/Sébastien
Buemi/Stéphane Sarrazin.

Toyota’s three great Le Mans cars have pride of place on display
at Toyota Motorsport’s headquarters in Cologne, but this year they
will all be on show and in action at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, from
11 to 14 July. The story behind each car is revealed in a new feature on
the official Toyota blog.